Full circles.
Never say never.
When I first started teaching guitar lessons in 1996, I believe that I was charging around $20/hour - and this was at a music store. This was the average rate back then. I think the busiest I ever got was four days at the store, and about twenty to twenty-five students. So, I would normally get paid about $400/week. This lasted for a very short period of time. I think by 1997, my roster had dropped down to about 15 weekly students. I had to start really pushing hard to do more in-house lessons, so I could charge more per lesson. I think I bumped it up to $25/hour. I honestly had no idea what my value truly was as a private instructor.
Then I met a wealthy businessman who wanted to take guitar lessons at his house. By about the third or fourth lesson, he asked me why I was only charging $25/hour to drive all the way out to his house. "Your time is valuable. You should be charging twice what you are now. People will pay $50/hour for you to come to their house and teach them the guitar.", he said. Nobody had ever said those kinds of words to me. Nobody had ever told me that what I was doing was of any real value. This was coming from a multi-millionaire businessman, who I'm sure, probably knew what he was talking about. He wrote a check for $200.00 for four more lessons and handed it to me. I had no idea that I could charge this much money to teach people how to play the guitar.
Okay, so, that was nearly twenty-five years ago. Life back then, was far less expensive. Me charging $50 for every one-hour lesson I did in the homes of my students, raised the proverbial bar on my income. I think at one point, I did maybe a dozen lessons at the store and about five or six in-home lessons on the other days of the week. By 1999, things had suddenly dropped off tremendously at the music store. I only had to go to the store one or two days each week, and only had maybe three or four lessons each day. This was prior to me knowing anything about computers and being online. All I had was word-of-mouth advertising. I had to wait for potential new students to call the music store looking for someone to come out to their house for lessons, instead of them coming to the store.
My income dropped off significantly. I ended up filing for bankruptcy later that year. Somehow, through all of that chaos, I managed to keep my apartment. Luckily, my car was already paid off. I barely squeaked by. I learned more about emailing, and getting on websites as a private instructor. This made a huge difference. By 2000, I was getting direct calls from new students looking for lessons. The music store changed ownership and within a year, all of the teachers were asked to leave because none of us were actually employees of the store. I ended up teaching one or two days at my buddies church. He had a few empty rooms that I could use for students to drive to. By this time, I had already bumped up my rates to $55/hour.
In 2004, I got offered a position to be the primary guitar teacher at a local music teaching store called "All about music". I liked the idea of driving to one place and the students coming to me. Unfortunately, within a few months, this music store turned out to be a drug front. The owner took off with our payroll for two weeks. I never saw that money. I quit that gig and took all of my students with me. It was at that point that I decided that I would never again do lessons at a store location. I made more money doing all in-house lessons anyway. I didn't need to work at a music store.
So, for the past twenty-plus years, my standard rate has been based on $55/hour. Most people would pay me $220.00 for four lessons, once each month. This went well for a few years. I wanted to have a value in the eyes of my students, but at the same time, be within reasonable affordability. Prior to 2020, I was dealing with intense competition from other private teachers around town, along with national schools. These schools had much deeper pockets for advertising and could afford to charge less.
By 2017, I had to walk away from teaching because of this. I just wasn't getting and keeping enough students. I ended up working a few jobs from 2017-2021. I was able to pick up a few lessons on my days off from these jobs, but it just wasn't the same. I missed teaching. I hated working for someone else just so I could pay my bills. In the summer of 2021, I quit my job and went back to teaching lessons. I refurbished my dead website that was still online, and changed all of the numbers and policies. I decided that I would now charge as much as $60/hour or more depending on the location of the student.
The covid insanity changed absolutely everything for everybody. People were told to "stay home" and not go out anywhere or do anything. The fear had rendered the masses immobilized. This meant that there were a lot of people sitting in their houses with nothing to do. Once they found my website, they started to call. By 2022, the covid plandemic had started to lose momentum and people were becoming less afraid to go out into the world again. I immediately saw a drop in students.
Shortly after the covid scare had dissipated, nearly everything skyrocketed in price. My rent went up over $200 on my next lease. Car insurance nearly doubled, groceries are insanely expensive, no matter where you go to shop. It only seemed reasonable to raise my rates to try to match this insanity. This again is that super fine balance of being valuable or being too expensive. I have no choice but to charge more.
I know that taking private guitar lessons in your home is considered an expendable luxury. People who are well-to-do and have money, don't really pay as much attention to my rates. They just want to pay for the convenience of having someone come to their home. This is my market. The problem that still exists is that I know for certain that there is a much cheaper market out there too. If I only charged $40/hour, I might get a few more people. The only issue with this is that these people are looking for bargains and free stuff to go with their home lessons. Their first concern is "how much does it cost?", not the actual progress of the lessons. I've had many people call and ask me if I do free lessons or if they could pay cheaper rates for the same service. The last thing I need in my life are people “nickel and diming” me to death with low-balling rates. I don't want those students.
Times are tough for everyone. They always have been. These past few years have been insane. So many people lost their jobs during the plandemic, which caused them to lose their livelihood. They all had to start over from scratch. Well, not everybody made it out alive. Many people lost everything by no fault of their own. To me, this was a wake up call to go back to being my own boss and toughing it out as far as I could. To say that the past few years of my life have been the worst struggles of my life, is a true understatement. I never know day to day what is going to happen with my teaching. I have needed something with some stability in my life, for a long time - like a second job to carry me through these lean times. Unfortunately, going back to my old job just wasn't an option.
I am now in the waiting stages of finding out if I will be working part time teaching lessons at the local music store again. I guess that enough time has now gone by since the covid, that people are willing to take lessons at music stores again. In all honesty, I am one of only a few private teachers in the Central Florida area. What I charge for in-house lessons seems to be the perfect rate for those who can afford me. However, there is that growing market of people who still want to take lessons, but they have a tighter budget. These are the people I hope to start teaching soon at the music store. Isn't it funny how life is so cyclical? I swore in 2005 that I would never work at another music store. Never say never.